The Verification Horizon: No Single Reward Function Works for Coding Agents at Scale
Qwen (Alibaba)
This Qwen team paper challenges the assumption that verification is the easy half of generate-then-verify for coding agents. Studying four reward constructions across general coding, frontend, and long-horizon tasks, it finds no static reward function remains effective as policy capability grows. Verification must co-evolve with the generator, characterized across three axes: scalability, faithfulness, and robustness.
Why it matters
Reward hacking and specification gaming are central problems in training capable coding agents. This paper provides a rigorous framework for verification failure modes at the frontier, with direct implications for how labs design RL pipelines.
Importance: 2/5
Directly relevant to frontier RL training for coding agents; from Alibaba Qwen team